Pages

Wednesday, 16 April 2014

Strawberry and vanilla petit fours

Having had leftover Jaconde sponge and cream patissiere I decided to make those little petit fours.. and they turned out so delicious I had to share the recipe with you! I used fresh strawberries but you could use any fruit you like...Ingredients:For the Jaconde sponge:

3 eggs

125g icing sugar

125g ground almonds

40g plain flour

15g caster sugar

3 egg whites

For the cream patissiere:

2 egg yolks

60g caster sugar

25g corn flour

250ml milk

1 vanilla pod or 1tsp vanilla paste

Additionally:

125g mascarpone cheese

To decorate:

250g strawberries

50g plain chocolate

To make the sponge whisk the eggs with icing sugar until pale and fluffy. Add sifted flour and almonds and gently fold in.

Beat the egg whites with caster sugar until medium peaks form and fold into the mixture.

Spread the mixture on two lined baking sheets (about 30cm x 15cm each). Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200C for about 8 minutes until golden brown.

Take out the oven and leave to cool on the trays.

To make the crème pâtissière, pour the milk into a pan, add the vanilla pod. Bring the milk up to the boil, then take it off the heat.

In a separate bowl whisk together the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour. Pour the hot milk over the mixture and whisk.

Pour the custard back into the saucepan and set over a medium heat.

Stir the custard constantly until the mixture thickens. The custard should be very thick as it needs to be a firm set when the cake is assembled.

Pour into a dish, cover the top with cling-film and chill in the fridge for about an hour until cold and set firm.

When the cream patissiere is cooled, gently whisk in the mascarpone cheese.

Using a small round pastry cutter cut out circles from the sponge. Pipe a small amount of the cream on half of the circles, place thinly sliced strawberries on top. Pipe more cream and cover with a 'plain' sponge circle.

Decorate with more cream, chopped strawberries and chocolate curls or grated chocolate.